A.N. This is just a bit of a bonus chapter. Its the events of chapter 7 from Ivar's perspective, like I said I had started writing it so here it is. Consider it a thank you for the lovely reviews and for your patience between the last two chapters. Thank you all again and I'll see you (hopefully this weekend) for the next chapter!

IVAR

"Keep up little brother, or you will miss all of the fun!"

Ivar never really liked celebrations since he always spent most of them sequestered to a chair in the corner. But tonight was different. Tonight Earl Jorgenson was to be offered up as a sacrifice to the gods to bring good tidings for the impending invasion of England. Ivar rippled with excitement as it always did when he was promised the sight of blood. The two things that always got his heart racing were fighting and experiencing the power of his gods. But recently, the presence of Tanaruz made him more excited than the other two combined. And tonight promised all three.

He and his brothers took their place near the stage as the rest of Kattegat flooded into the square. Ivar looked past all of the familiar faces for Tanaruz, but it seemed as though the square was struggling to accommodate the entire population of Kattegat as well as the newcomers that followed Largatha from Hedeby.

He was still trying to find her when the procession began and the Earl took his place. As the ceremony started and Ivar felt the sacred power of the ritual his senses dulled and he was captivated by the sight of a healthy young man like the Earl, willingly giving up his life for a raid of a country he would never see.

He was engrossed in the ritual when something across the way tugged at his senses. Like a faint pull on a fishing line his attention broke from the stage and drew him to a pair of amber eyes across the stage.

Time stopped as he took in the sight of Tanaruz. She was dressed in the traditional Viking garb for women but the clean cream color of her dress only made her olive skin more vibrant. Her inky tresses were braided back from her face and allowed the torchlight to reflect off her her high cheekbones and aquiline nose. She was dressed like every other woman in the crowd but Ivar felt she looked like an otherworldly goddess trying to blend in with the drab surroundings.

He was so enraptured by her beauty that he only just realized her amber eyes had anger and disgust in them when she suddenly slipped away and was swallowed by the crowd.

Why was she looking at me like that? He wondered and before he allowed himself the time to puzzle it out, he decided to find her and get the answer from her own mouth.

He crawled as fast as his arms would take him and wove his way out of the crowd, and he was grateful for once in his life that everyone in Kattegat was so afraid of him they instantly moved out of his path.

He finally made it to opposite side of the square where she would have exited the crowd and he only caught a flash of her hair as she shot down the road heading toward the forrest. He thought for a moment she was running from him until he saw a man chase after her.

In that moment, everything got colder and it was like all of the blood in his body stopped pumping and he could only see red.

Ivar was a man who had been known to severely injure men for minor slights but seeing some man run after Tanaruz filled him with an all consuming rage. He knew what Viking men were capable of and his heart writhed with the idea of another man laying so much as a finger on her dusky skin.

He sprung into action and thanked the gods he had docked his chariot to the stables at the beginning of the road, only a few feet away from him. He scrambled in and did not bother with strapping himself in properly and set his horses in motion down the dark road toward the forrest.

All of the usual feelings of freedom and joy that Ivar usually experienced on the chariot were replaced by a panicked feeling of urgency and he willed his already speedy horses to go even faster. He followed the man out of the village and just before Tanaruz made it into the woods the bastard stopped and threw a dagger from god knows were and hit her in the thigh.

Ivar's blood boiled but because the assailant stopped dead in his tracks to better his aim it gave Ivar the time to close in in him and just as the monster turned at the sound of his wheels, Ivar leapt from the side of the moving chariot and landed on the man with a crash.

He had just enough time before jumping to see that the man that was chancing Tanaruz was not just an ordinary Viking, but King Harald himself. This discovery had little bearing on Ivar's mind as he did not see a King that outranked his status, but instead, only saw a man that was after Tanaruz.

His instincts from the many years of grappling with his brothers took hold of his body and he grappled with King Harald until he saw the flash of yet another dagger and from the edges of his vision he could see Tanaruz limping over to try and help him. Ivar was running on pure adrenaline and instinct now and without even thinking he shouted to her, in a voice he only reserved for giving orders to fellow warriors,

"NO. NO, TANARUZ. RUN! RUN!"

With part of his attention on getting her away from danger, he failed to block a swipe from the King and he cried out as he felt the danger cut across his chest. But Ivar's mind was scrambling to think of a place she could be safe and since the whole town was enraptured in the ritual, they would provide no help to her, so his mouth blurted the only place he could think of that might help her hide until the monster he was wrestling with was vanquished.

"RUN TO THE RIVER!" He shouted with all of his might and his urgent tone must have worked because she finally turned and hobbled away and Ivar let himself be relived for a moment before focusing on the task at hand.

His upper body strength was far superior to that of a normal man, from so many years of reeling on them to do what his legs could not and Ivar used this to his advantage as he held the King and dagger at bay. Ivar made a move to grab the knife from the king but was instead rewarded with a cut across his palm. This only enraged him more and Ivar passed the injured hand across the eyes of the king, using the blood flooding out of his hand to blind the king and give him the moment he needed. In the split second it took for the king to try and clear his eyes, Ivar snatched the knife from his hands and buried it into the side of the kings neck.

As quickly as the energy of the fight broke out it suddenly ended and Ivar stayed that way for a few moments. He was still on top of the king's body, panting and listening to the blood rushing in his ears. He knew there would be consequences for killing a king, especially one with such a devoted brother but he decided to worry about that later Right now he needed to make sure that Tanaruz had made it to the river safely.

He crawled over to where his obedient horses had stopped in their tracks and clambered into his seat as best he set the horses in motion and followed the familiar path to the river.

He crashed though the trees and nearly unseated himself riding over roots and logs but he could only think of getting the river.

He strained to see anything in the dim moonlight but he could just make out the reflection of the river and he was dizzy with relief when he saw Tanaruz. She was standing in her white dress on the banks of the river lit only by moonlight and in that moment Ivar knew he had never seen anything so beautiful.

Gods she looks like a vision. Just the sight of her and I'm light headed.

He was stopping his horses and tried to climb out when he realized it was not the sight of her that made him dizzy but in fact his great loss of blood from his two wounds. Ivar was about to hit the ground when a pair of warm hands suddenly caught him. They struggled to put him into a sitting position and the second he was as close to comfortable as he could be in his injured state, Tanaruz launched into a series of questions,

"ARE YOU HURT BADLY? HOW DID YOU KNOW TO COME HELP ME? WHY DID YOU COME TO HELP ME? IS THAT MAN…THAT.. THAT HORRIBLE MAN DEAD?"

She could have slapped him across the face and that should have shocked him less than to see her ask so many questions in his language.

Clearly she knows much more than she let on. My goodness she looks the way that she does and was able to almost master a language in under three moons. But why hide such intelligence? Ah. Most people in Kattegat only see a Moorish slave girl when they look at her. If they found out that slave girl had such intelligence they would worry.

"It seems you learn quickly Tanaruz." He said wryly. From the shocked expression on her face it seemed she had just realized her misstep. She must have been carefully harboring this secret for some time and Ivar felt a pang of pity ring out in his chest for her. He knew her existence here was not an easy one but he now realized how much more lonely it must have been to draw an invisible line and always be on guard with everyone she encountered. They sat in silence until she looked at his wounds and then for a place to treat them. He remembered why he told her to run there and told her about the house. They worked in perfect unison and silent exhaustion to get them both over the stream. He found the strength to take the lead and direct her to get water as he mindlessly made a fire. She returned just as he was struggling to pull off his vest and suppressed him when she helped him out of it. Ivar was so captivated by the closeness of her body as she started to dampen a cloth to clean out his wound he did not at first notice the wound on the back of her thigh.

When he did however, his senses sharped at once and his strength returned in a moment.

"What is this?! Why did you not tell me you were hurt as well?!"

"It is fine. I will take care of it my self aft—"

Gods, for a woman so clearly intelligent, how did it seem logical to her to ignore such a serious wound.

He lacked the energy to fight with her and instead gripped her hips and pulled her body across her his lap. But as Ivar looked into her shocked expression he realized that he was treating her with the harsh soldier efficiency he had treated everyone with since childhood. His heart and eyes softened and he vowed to all the gods that he would treat her with a gentler hand…at least in comparison to how he usually treated people.

I can start now, she looks so frightened and she is badly hurt. And healing her is only going to hurt some more, that time I stabbed Hviserk in the arm he needed stitches.

He almost didn't trust himself to touch her knowing how his body and mind were reacting to being so close to her but this needed to be done.

"Let me take care of this first. A stab is more important than a few scratches." he said in the most reassuring voice he could muster. It must not have worked because Tanaruz began to argue,

"Bu—"

"You can not help me at all if you bleed to much and faint" he said, trying to appeal to her rational side and making it seem like she would really be the one doing him a favor.

This seemed to do the trick and he tried to lighten the mood,

"See? I knew you were clever." he grinned at her but all humor left his body when he looked at the blood soaking through her white dress.

"I have to lift up your dress to get to the wound, but do not be afraid, Tanaruz"

She made no protest and all of his tactile senses rushed to his fingertips as he slid her dress up over her legs.

Inch by inch he uncovered her honey colored calves, and her curvy thighs before ending right before her buttocks. Ivar focused on the wound to distract him from the other things his eyes wanted to wander to.

If I hadn't already killed that cunt of a king, I would vow to now.

Pure rage flowed through his body as he was cleaning the blood and he was so angry he was careless with her wound and Tanaruz's body flinched. The rage immediately left his body and he said

"It is alright. Everything will be alright."

Focus, fool! What would it say to her if she got hurt being healed too?

Before Ivar started the stitches he dared to reach a hand out to rest on the small of her back and hoped she could sense the reassurance he was trying to convey.

"I'll try to be quick"

He reverted back to his knowledge of wounds from the many times he and his brothers had had to patch each other up and worked as swiftly and effectively as he could. When he finished he found a pot of the purifying salve in her little medicine pack and applied a coat to her wound and the warm smooth skin surrounding it.

"Almost finished."

This is the part Ivar would have to show the most restraint. He would have to wrap her leg up in bandages and that required lifting and touching her shapely thighs. He mustered all of his strength and warped his hands around her thigh as gently as he could.

God's why did you see it fit to give someone such soft thighs. Soft and plump not like the hard muscular legs of viking women. Oh Odin help me, my hands are in-between her legs now. Alright enough before you do something scandalous.

He pulled her dress back down and helped her back up.

"Do you feel alright?"

She looked at him with those stunning eyes and Ivar could not believe that they could be just as erotic as her thighs. She nodded and said,

"Thank you."

He was speechless. No one had ever thanked him for anything before in his life, because he had never done anything for anyone to ever warrant it.

"Now let me help you."

Forgive me gods. I know this is all wrong. I should not care this much about some foreign girl, but by the blood in my body, I must hear that voice say my name. Just once.

"Ivar"

"What?"

"My name. You've never said it"

Time stopped and he waited in anticipation looking into those remarkable eyes.

"….Let me help you….Ivar"

It is even better than I could have imagined.